The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: which can please without having recourse to subserviency or to making
overtures, she succeeded in winning general esteem by an exquisite
tact; the sensitive warnings of which enabled her to follow the
delicate line along which she might satisfy the exactions of this
mixed society, without humiliating the touchy pride of the parvenus,
or shocking that of her own friends.
Then about thirty-eight years of age, she still preserved, not the
fresh plump beauty which distinguishes the daughters of Lower
Normandy, but a fragile and, so to speak, aristocratic beauty. Her
features were delicate and refined, her figure supple and easy. When
she spoke, her pale face lighted and seemed to acquire fresh life. Her
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: be done, and that was to play a straightforward part, the law being the law,
and the woman between whom and himself there was no more unity than between
east and west being in the eye of the Church one person with him.
Having to meet Arabella here, it was impossible to meet Sue at Alfredston
as he had promised. At every thought of this a pang had gone through him;
but the conjuncture could not be helped. Arabella was perhaps
an intended intervention to punish him for his unauthorized love.
Passing the evening, therefore, in a desultory waiting about the town wherein
he avoided the precincts of every cloister and hall, because he could
not bear to behold them, he repaired to the tavern bar while the hundred
and one strokes were resounding from the Great Bell of Cardinal College,
Jude the Obscure |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: against him.
Whereas Cleggett, until he had recognized Wilton Barnstable in
the boat, had thought it likely that the Annabel Lee and Morris's
were allied against the Jasper B.
Now that Cleggett knew the commander of the Annabel Lee to be
Wilton Barnstable, his first impulse was to go to the Great
Detective and invite his cooperation against Loge and the gang at
Morris's. But almost instantly he reflected that he could not do
this. For there was the box of Reginald Maltravers! Indeed, how
did he know that it was not the box of Reginald Maltravers which
had brought the Great Detective to that vicinity? This man--of
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